I went to the Student Services Finance Committee meeting Wednesday night because I read a headline: “Multicultural Student Coalition to ask SSFC for $1 million.”

The meeting attracted an overflow attendance. They let me have one of the comfortable chairs because I got there early. I waited patiently for things to start. Most people seemed to know each other. I got to put faces with a few names I had heard before. The mood was welcoming and people seemed happy to be there. I was offered a cookie. It was excellent.

The organization that I witnessed, SSFC, seemed weighted in favor of budget approval from the start. Statements made by both attendees and SSFC members suggested almost unanimous support for approving a $977,418 budget. The money had gotten my attention, but it became clear that this amounted to some $25 difference in my tuition. Over the course of ninety minutes, I was gripped by a much deeper concern.

The pervading sentiment of that whole time is well described in one attendee’s claim that “diversity is equality: This requires jobs for advocation and representation. We need people in those positions. Equality falls on students’ shoulders. They need every last resource.”

People appeared and left, offering personal examples of how the MCSC helped them. The term “campus climate” came up, and I was able to witness for the first time what this means. People testified that this budget must pass because of their personal experiences. One girl reported taking only three credits because she had to work 60-80 hours per week for the organization. Others turned to a paid person specifically of their own color for someone to talk to. One articulate student described the need for paid multicultural “resources” in the freshman dorms to dampen the high attrition rate.

The underlying logic of the organization revealed to me was contrary to common sense. This group was telling me that there are multicultural people and then there is me. It says that I can’t understand people of other cultures. Nobody ever asks how culture is defined. Not one “multicultural” person I know was at that meeting. They knew or cared less about it than I must have.

This organization is driven to invent jobs so students can be paid to hold them.

And I don’t accuse them of being greedy. They could have jobs as telemarketers, pizza cooks, mattress deliverypeople or even in libraries. But I believe that this organization confers upon its members a good feeling. It is a group of friends. It is a sheltered enclave where whites are finally a minority, but still welcome to join. They want to stop hate crimes and keep minority kids from dropping out because they don’t feel welcome amongst so many white kids.

I want to also. I do it for free. There was talk of the need to increase campus diversity (via recruitment) in order to maintain the prestige of the university, so employers would know that we were sensitive to multiculturalism. If this is the goal, then MCSC is headed in the wrong direction. If these kids are always working at a MSCS center, involved in some function, not taking any classes, then they are not meeting me. How is emphasizing our differences and casting them as irreconcilable going to make for a better future?

Lucky for me, random chance has granted me hundreds of contacts and scores of friends who are multicultural, mixed, even born multicultural and raised white. They just don’t care. And neither do I. We get along fine and our minds are not preoccupied with race. The majority of students of any color are meeting and receiving genuine affirmation that they are not inherently different from one another along racial lines. This happens using parts of the university that aren’t segregated. This happens at the SERF, the unions, in class, sporting events and most powerfully in the dorms. Familiarity breeds friendship. This works to make integration possible. It also works to handicap it when likeminded individuals sequester themselves.

I do believe that students may then be targeted because of how they look. Some guy wants to fight tonight, and if he’s really dull he picks on someone he thinks deserves it because of race. What can anyone do? Money won’t solve it.

He’s not the guy who was going to change his mind because of awareness campaigns or counselors recruited specifically to match his victim’s race. I condemn it, I don’t perpetrate it and I’d eagerly intervene. What good will come of reporting crimes to student organizations rather than police? Should there be a distinct multicultural police?

Creating race-specific services and initiatives to recruit students who match racial criteria spells more alienation for the future. Everything that the million dollars is going to fund already exists for everyone. Most of it (awareness, sensitivity to other cultures, a shoulder to cry on) already is freely available to all students via this university’s superior library system, excellent faculty and real life.

By using these same services together, by not caring much about race, a better campus climate is guaranteed. There were some real characters at that meeting. I wish they would put themselves back into circulation so I could meet them under less contrived circumstances.

Mark Silverman ([email protected]) is senior majoring in psychology.